I mentioned back when I was getting my Runabout and Runamuck that they were numbers three and four of the five versions of the Tracks/Wheeljack mold I was destined to own, and here's number five.  It's Shattered Glass Tracks!  His personality is that he's Tracks, but he's evil.  He's not opposite in any way other than the heroic/evil switch.  He's still ridiculously vain.  Not the most interesting direction to go with him, but considering Tracks is generally considered a gay dude by the fandom, flipping that around could have gone unintentionally terribly wrong, so let's count our blessings.

He's in red Diaclone colors, which is what Road Rage also is, so you can repurpose this red Tracks as her.  If you want.  Maybe you should, since SG Tracks got all of 3 panels of exposure in this year's convention comic, so it's not like he left much of a mark.

Looking at my sea of Trackses, I feel sorry for Wheeljack.  Only his head didn't get used more than once!  Everyone else's head got two uses.  Maybe Hasbro or Tomy should fix that, giving me six uses of the mold.

Not sure who it should be.  I already got a Slicer.

Woo, Overlord!  ...well, "Gigatron," for trademark reasons.  "Gigatron" was what Overlord was called in America when he was sold as a "Heroes of Cybertron" PVC figure a decade ago, so when Hasbro still can't use "Overlord," that's still the obvious substitute.

I was excited for Overlord because I didn't have an Overlord.   He was a very large and very expensive double Powermaster guy that was sold in Japan and Europe but not here.  I was pretty apathetic to him until he starred in "Last Stand of the Wreckers," and that sure didn't hurt his toy's street value, no.  But now I have this one, which is Bludgeon with a new head.  And oh how he's Bludgeon with a new head.  It's kind of hard to miss it.  Bludgeon's new toy was so very Bludgeon, you see.  Like, all of him, from head to toe.  Replacing his head doesn't really hide the Bludgeonyness.

But I'll deal.  The Bludgeon toy itself is pretty damn amazing, and I have sung its praises, so regardless of its appropriateness, it's nice to have a character I like as a toy I like.  There are a few things I am careful with, though.  I'm actually on my second Bludgeon, since I broke my first one's hand by trying to put the sword in there.  So I am probably not going to be doing that with Overlord very much.  I can't go down to the store and get another of him for $20.  Also, when you transform him, his nose kinda grazes the inside of his own chest.  I've already dabbed his nostrils with a silver Sharpie marker to cover up where I rubbed off some paint.  Thank goodness his face color is silver.

Shattered Glass Soundwave's profile card begins, "There is no Decepticon in any universe like Soundwave."  Man, everyone always forgets Cybertron Soundwave.

As a big proponent of Recordicons in general, and Shattered Glass ones in specific, in many respects I was pretty happy to be getting a toy of SG Soundwave!  He's a fun guy!  It did bum me out when he got this particular body in the Club fiction years ago, since I'd already splurged on his original body (Sonic White MP3 Soundwave) and wasn't keen to get a replacement for it, but by 2012 he'd had this body for a while and he'd basically done all of his stuff while in it.  This body had become the character by then.  The old boxy MP3 body had become a footnote.

I do happen to be in the very tiny minority that doesn't mind the Ironhide/Ratchet body.  It doesn't bug me much that his arm transformation zigzags creases across the side of his altmode.  It results in an interesting transformation, so I'm cool with it.  The one thing that did bug me was the engineering error that kept the head from looking forward, and that was something the new Soundwave head for this toy fixed.  They just sculpted the neck at an angle so the head looks forward.  And so my potential complaint about the toy itself had been removed.

However, man, that new head didn't look so hot in photographs.  It was kind of like a hit to the gut.  I was excited about him, and the face sculpt took the air out of my sails.  I am happy to report that it doesn't look that bad in person.  Or I've grown used to it.  Either way, not a big deal, I guess.  What IS way better in person than in photos is his color scheme.  His blue is attractively electric.  ...and it appears to be entirely paint on top of otherly-colored plastic (probably black).  Which is fine, because its matte-ness is part of its appeal to me, I think.  It's an especially great white/blue color combination once you throw in the green highlights.

What's not cool is that headband.  I mean, I guess I'm glad it exists.  The headband is very important to Soundwave's visuals.  Without it, he's like Popeye without his pipe or Bugs without his carrot.  But, man, this headband does not look great.  It's very rough and there's a big line of mold flash across the entire perimeter.  And it's entirely the wrong shade of green.  Hrn.

Still, all together, I was pleasantly surprised.  Just not about the headband.  Everything else is pretty keen.

Out of all of this year's BotCon toys, Shattered Glass Straxus was the only one I got to find out about at the convention itself.  All the others were leaked via lists or stolen samples, and the identity of SG Longarm was revealed officially the Wednesday morning before I left for the con. And so in a really oldschool way, I got to find out what a BotCon toy was when I arrived, like it was 1998 or something up in this shiz!

SG Straxus was the "attendee freebie," meaning if you buy the immense box set and arrive at the convention to pick it up like you're supposed to, you get a free extra guy.  If you buy the set and don't attend, no dice.  I was kind of surprised to learn that the freebie was a mold not seen elsewhere in the set!  The freebie tends to be something else used elsewhere but redecoed, like one of the guys with a new head so they get a second use out of the new head.  No, this was a mold unique to the set!  Sweetness.

If you've been reading my website for any amount of time, you know my fondness for Straxus.  He was a comic book-only character for decades until he finally got toy-ified in 2010.  I'm happy, then, that he gets a toy of his mirrorverse self.  I kind of feel like it legitimizes him more.  He's an increasingly important guy!  And while this weekend was the first time we heard about his SG figure, we were introduced to the idea of an SG Straxus in the various SG prose stories long ago.  And so it's also nice to have a toy of that guy.  All we knew about him was that he was a poet, which is, as you'd imagine, the opposite of his "normal" self, which was a megalomaniacal despot.  So, woo, poet Transformer toy!   With a battle pick axe!

The colors on this guy are the icing on the cake.  See, long ago Germany published some KIND OF REALLY BAD versions of the original Marvel Comics.  Their covers were on crack, full of art swipes and insane color choices.  And one of these insane color choices/art swipes was the floating head of Straxus decked out in gold, black, and bright green.

You can connect the dots.

We're running out of wacky things to reference, guys.

I'm pretty happy.

I might as well lump the other two uses of the Jazz mold here in one post.

The first, Shattered Glass Treadshot, I talked about a little already when the toy was first revealed.  He's an homage to a 2004 Treadshot toy which was pitted against an Ultra Magnus toy.  That Treadshot was a maroon redeco of Armada Sideswipe, and true to Shattered Glass's oft-repeated theme of rivals in each other's color schemes, this Treadshot is in Armada Sideswipe's colors.

Let's all take a moment to appreciate the fact that this BotCon toy is not only an Armada homage but, as he's a Treadshot paired off against an Ultra Magnus, also an homage to a 2004 Universe box set.  This is insane.

I like to think that this Treadshot IS that Treadshot, and that they are the same dude, and so I tried to find a way to get this Treadshot to interact with that Treadshot's Mini-Con partner, Nightbeat.  Treadshot has no Powerlinx connectors, and so I thought I was stuck with just balancing Nightbeat's motorcyle mode on his back or something.  But then I remembered Treadshot's speakers combine with his rifle to make a larger gun, and thought I could do something with that.  And I did.  And it sort of works.  I call it "The Chopper."

Treadshot was in the preregistration box set, but the other use of the Jazz mold was one of the at-show toys.  It was Kick-Off, and he's an Action Master!  BotCon has given us one Action Master recreation every year since 2009, and this is something I never complain about.  And I certainly wouldn't complain about Kick-Off!  I mean, I don't have a lot of feelings for Kick-Off in general, but this toy of him is amaaaaaazing.  And also frustrating.  Amazingly frustrating.  Let me tell you why.

He has florescent orange.  Or blacklight orange.  Whatever you want to call it.  That stripe that runs down the middle of his car mode is painted florescent orange.  And it is SO FRICKING BEAUTIFUL.  But it won't photograph.  I don't think RGB can do florescent.  And if it can, I sure can't figure out how.  This means when I try to share him with you via photography, he instead turns out looking kinda dreary.  But it is FANTASTIC, YOU GUYS, BELIEVE ME.

His forearms and weapons are molded in a bright orange I like to call "Action Master orange."  Lots of Action Masters got stuff molded or painted in this color, like Optimus Prime's detailing and weapons and Shockwave's accent colors.  It was the early 90s, after all.  If my childhood nostalgia could be embodied in a specific color, Action Master orange would be it.   And so with the florescent orange and the Action Master orange are coupled with black and white and a little red, it results in a crazy-awesome toy.

But one I can't photograph accurately, god dammit.

I am sitting here all grrrrrrrrrr.

Apparently there were going to be more Jazzes than even I realized.

This was the second year I've attended the BotCon customization class.  Last year I got to make Animated Minerva, and I had fun, so I did my best to sign up this year, too, and somehow succeeded.  It's pretty difficult to get in!  There are very limited seats and they basically sell out between when the prereg form goes live and its announcement on Twitter.  God must be rewarding me for my general apathy towards Him.

Same as last year, we were given an unassembled toy still on the tree, with all the screws and bolts and pins necessary to put him together.  What's not same as last year is the level of difficulty involved.  Animated Minerva was pretty straightforward.  Jazz, meanwhile, is way more complicated.  He's got SPRINGS, man!  And large bolts that go through the entirety of his torso, requiring a dremel.  Certain things were wisely deemed too difficult for novices and were left to a small group of extremely patient helpers.  The first day, I've heard, was grueling.  The kits sent from Asia were constructed differently than the samples sent earlier, necessitating some reorchestrating of its assembly.  By the second day, when I was there, most of these things were ironed out.  I had an excellent time, despite the more difficult assembly.   It took me about seven hours from start to finish.  (Apparently some folks from Day One required upwards of twelve.)

Longarm began as a simple Classics Shockwave idea.  He was given a new head and a gun arm, constructed at home by the class's perennial organizer, Shawn Tessman, which completed the transformation from Purple Jazz to Alternators Shockblast homage.  The kit still came with the original head and hand, of course, because it's all on the original sprues, so this toy was given a secondary identity, that of Shattered Glass Longarm.  If you recall from Transformers Animated, Shockwave infiltrated the Autobots under the Longarm identity, and a similar thing was happening here.  There does seem to be some conflict between Shawn and the other BotCon folks on what specific Shockwave this guy represents, whether it be the Marvelverse one or Shattered Glass.  The included profile strongly suggests Marvelverse, but that'll likely be decided more definitively in any future fictional appearances he might make.

My only regret is that I had to take pictures of this guy for TFwiki, meaning I couldn't use the provided orange paint to do this guy up in Action Master colors.  That would have been sweet.
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I didn't know or care where it was "from," just that it was a frigging awesome 6"-scale rainbow pegasus unicorn, and that not only must I own it, but Batman must ride it.  Apparently it's a She-Ra thing!  I wouldn't know.  My mom cut me off He-Man for being anti-Jesus-Having-All-The-Power long before any spin-offs could happen.  But this, I would have it.

I wasn't sure I could justify dropping $33 plus shipping on a sudden whim.  So some readers on Twitter helped me out and bought some stuff from my store to give me an incentive to purchase the thing.  And so I totes did.

It's huge.  I mean, I know horses are pretty big, but this thing is, regardless, substantial.  There's a surprising amount of articulation -- the neck turns around in various directions and even the tail is a ratcheted balljoint.  The wings are removable, which is good, because I have to take one of them off to fit the thing on a shelf.

You know.

My Batman shelf.

Yay, the 2012 Transformers Collectors' Club membership figure, Runamuck, arrived in my mailbox today!  That is super good, because not only was his inseparable buddy Runabout fairly lonely, but because it arrived before I head out to BotCon tomorrow evening.  Sweeeeeet. (I will have a table in the Artist Alley again this year.)

I will say this: Runamuck (white) is waaaaaaaay way prettier than Runabout (black).  It's the cream and the orange and the gold.  They're just empirically more interesting than black/red/silver.  That's right, I'm stating it as a fact.  Try and stop me!

There isn't much left to say about the mold itself that I haven't said already.  This is my fourth version of it (Tracks/Wheeljack/Runabout) and I'm going to be getting a fifth version of it tomorrow night at BotCon (SG Tracks).  It's a good mold, so if I'm gonna have a lot of something, this is a good thing to have a lot of.  And they're all characters I like, so even more bonus.  (Well, I don't know what SG Tracks' personality is yet, but he's visually Road Rage, who I do like.  If I end up hating SG Tracks, I'll be happy to pretend he's Road Rage instead.)

I bought the BBTS-exclusive Slaughter's Marauders box set months and months ago.  It feels like decades.  They've just been sitting unopened next to my desk in a pile of other stuff.  The problem was I couldn't find my goddamned Sergeant Slaughter.  And I refused to let myself open up the box and take the dudes out until I found him.

I hadn't seen Slaughter since we moved to this new place.  And I knew he was one of the last things to get packed, which meant that he probably wasn't with my G.I. Joes, but in a separate, unique spot all his own.  And, indeed, I had torn apart all of my toy bins, one by one, several times just to look for him, to no success.  And I have a loooooooooot of toy bins, and they are laaaaaaaarge.  And so my Marauders went unopened.

Until I was digging through my photos and found an image from the middle of the move of just my Masterpiece King Grimlock and Sergeant Slaughter sharing an otherwise empty spot on a shelving cube unit near our television!  Aha!  This was his last location!  This might be a clue!  I checked my MP Grimlock box, no dice, but ultimately found Slaughter in the bottom of one of those canvas storage cubes, under a bunch of Wii crap.  Huzzah!  Opening time, at last!

Look, I don't know who most of the guys in this set are, but I am pretty sure they weren't all Marauders.  Sure, there's Lowlight, Spirit, Barbecue... but who's this football guy?  Was Falcon in the team and I'd forgotten?  And some other folks.  Naw.  According to the Internet, these are just guys who hang out with Sergeant Slaughter in the animated film, retroactively considered Marauders, and taking up spaces that REAL Marauders could have had!  I coulda had a Footloose and Mutt!  Instead, I borrow my normal Mutt.  I have no Footloose.  (There's apparently only a movie-style one, but he came in another box set.)

So screw those non-Marauders.  They can stay in the box.  ...maybe I'll keep the football guy.  For the football.  We'll see.  The rest need to stop taking up space in my house.  This is a hollow threat, because I'm pretty damn sure I have a pile of other Joe box sets I've bought and taken one or two figures from and then abandoned.

But seriously!  Slaughter's Marauders!  These were THE EFFIN' GUYS when I was a kid.  I realize I am probably fairly alone on this.  But I latched onto these guys pretty strongly.  I was already a fan of Sergeant Slaughter, and these were his dudes!  And they were older dudes who I hadn't owned, so I built up this personal mythology about how they were so awesome just based on the strength that they were older toys who were so awesome that they got to be rereleased as Slaughter's posse.

They were also so awesome that they could apparently get away with looking like they'd rolled around in some spoiled neapolitan ice cream.   Despite this, nobody messed with them.  Needless to say, these newer versions are an improvement.

Anyway, I'm happy, because I am the biggest fan of these guys.  I was such a big fan I had to look up to see if Falcon really was on their team and who these other dudes were and who I was missing.  ...yeah.  Okay.

Nostalgia, folks.

BotCon is the weekend after this coming weekend, and I'm gonna have a table again!  Like last year, since I like to attend panels the same as anybody else, I have a schedule of when I'll likely be at my table so you can find me and not be disappointed 'cuz I'm somewhere else.  Mind, I still reserve the right to wander the dealer room or get lunch or whatever, but I've marked out when I definitely will be at panels!

(Less stuff that I'm interested in this year, seems like, so I might have more table time than last year.  Or maybe I'll indulge in more panels? We'll see!)

A tentative schedule for tableness below, as I see it currently:

Friday, April 27
9pm-10:50am -- MSTF! panel I'll be there!
2pm-5pm -- Dealer room opens, at my table probably no interruptions all afternoon?

Saturday, April 28
9am-noon -- at my table
*Derrick Wyatt panel*
1pm-2:30 -- at my table
*Hasbro panel*
4pm-5pm -- at my table

Sunday, April 29
11am-3:30pm -- at my table all day following the morning script reading?